REVIEW: Mushroom Wars 2

Thursday, August 2nd, 2018

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The RTS genre is one I don’t take on very often, but I do enjoy a good game in the genre when they roll around. This is pretty rare for me since I think last one I really enjoyed was Warcraft 3, but when an opportunity came around to check out Mushroom Wars 2 on the Nintendo Switch, I decided to jump on it. I had heard great things about the first game, so let’s see what the sequel has to offer.

The first thing I noticed was there is a ton of single player missions in the game. Over 200 to be exact, and progressing through these will give you tutorials on how to utilize all of your units and resources in the game. The pacing at which this unlocks is a bit strange, since they seem a bit too spaced out, but this is far better than one long dry tutorial as you are getting bit of story as you learn the game’s mechanics.

Mushroom Wars 2 is an easy game to learn, but it takes time to master. Proper planning will go a long ways towards victory in any match. Your troops will accumulate in your bases as time passes. This is basically like gathering resources in other RTS games. You can upgrade these buildings to speed up the rate at which troops are amassed. So this always has you asking the question, do I spend troops to upgrade or attack? You may want to upgrade one of your structures to a tower. It wouldn’t produce Soldiers any but would attack enemies that come near. If the tower placement is not helping you can tear it back down, so it can produce them again. There are lots of different ways you can play this, in fact I would say the story missions feel more like a puzzle at times since they are trying to teach the proper way to counter opponents tactics.

The single player can feel kinda of repetitive. I mean there are some pretty neat cut scenes with great artwork, but there are so many of them it seems to drag on. The muliplayer however makes up for any shortcomings there by a mile. Matches here are fast, frantic and downright fun. There are three different match types to choose from; Conquest, where you take all the buildings on the map; Domination, where you capture all the special buildings on the map and lastly King of the Hill, where you score points for taking buildings and first to 300 wins. Matches can be played on or offline with up to 4 players. This means you can set up matches that are free for all or go 2 vs 2. I played quite a few matches online with no lag at all, so everything seems pretty solid here.

Another thing that really adds to the multiplayer is that each player will choose a hero at the beginning of the game. There are 12 of these to choose from and each has their own special skills that can really turn the tide of battle. These include things like buffing defense, giving towers more firepower for a time, increasing attack and speed temporarily and more. This really adds some spice to multiplayer matches and depending on who you choose the battle can turn out very differently.

Well, the game is packed with content, but how does it look you may ask? It looks pretty good honestly. Everything looks to be hand painted, so it kinda looks like a war with tiny soldiers is taking place on canvas. I really dug the designs of the heroes. Pahom was by far my favorite, the Reaper shroom is coming for your soul! The game runs at a solid framerate docked or undocked no matter how much craziness is happening on screen.

While I wouldn’t call the soundtrack great it does fit this game pretty well. It has this nice fantasy feel while still being kinda lighthearted. Think epic Lord of The Rings music with some whimsy! There is no voice acting in the game, but there are some grunts and conformation noises from the troops. The sound effects really add to game however, lots war horns and fitting sounds as your troops are shot with canons and buildings and such are being upgraded.

All in all while I can’t say Mushroom Wars 2 changed my mind about the genre, it’s certainly a great game for fans of it. There is a ton of content here and the multiplayer is robust and a ton of fun. I had a little issue with the controls here, but I feel that was mostly me being used to RTS games on a PC rather than a console. If you’re not a fan of this genre, you should probably avoid this one, but fans should certainly look into picking this one up at the $19.99 price tag. You will get a lot of bang for your buck.

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About Steve Baltimore

Steve started with oprainfall not long after the campaign moved from the IGN forums to Facebook. Ever since, he has been fighting to give all non-mainstream RPGs a fair voice. As the site admin, he will continue to do this and even show there is value in what some would deem "pure ecchi." He loves niche games and anime more than anything... well, except maybe Neptune.